LA CIENEGA AREA

The school of thought holding that everyone is endowed with only one good idea has a good deal of credence in the art world. In the most limiting manifestation of that philosophy, artists have been encouraged to develop an aesthetic logo--preferably a marketable one--and stick with it throughout their careers. Whether this trademark leaves room for growth depends upon an artist’s capabilities and how expansive the idea is.

Los Angeles artist Charles Arnoldi’s idea--and artistic identity--has been bound up with sticks for the last decade or so, and it has held up surprisingly well. He has built rather fragile, open wall pieces of tree branches and massive thickets of painted sticks; he has subtracted slashing, stick-like cuts from rough chunks of wood, and he has translated his wood sculpture into handsome but far less compelling paintings and prints.

The latest development to go on public view is Arnoldi’s conversion of his wood thickets into bronze. That was a surprising and successful leap, but less startling than five new bronzes in a current show. The essential Arnoldi is still here in open, linear enclosures of space, and the major structural elements are still bronze branches and twigs. The news is his introduction of metal puddles, cones, blunt-toothed “rakes,” twisted mechanical elements and (Who’d have thought it?) a couple of cowboys and a horse.

Arnoldi is sure to be criticized, first for incorporating recognizable images in his work now that figurative art is in vogue, and then for producing sculpture so reminiscent of David Smith. Yet the new work is engagingly spirited and the move may well be liberating. With typical aplomb, Arnoldi runs through a repertoire of compositional forces--vertical and horizontal in “The Big Bite,” a leaning mass in “Fallen Heroes.”

By and large, the tone of the sculpture is rather whimsically ragged but it resonates with vaguely ominous overtones. The title “Famine” suggests that a metal configuration projecting from one piece may be an Ethiopian victim. The “Fallen Heroes” are cowboys and a horse (leftovers of a romantic way of life), tossed to the winds or hanging upside-down in a prickly mass.

Arnoldi’s view of nature has always been affected by mankind’s willful force. But here, for the first time, social content has settled tentatively into a body of essentially abstract work. (James Corcoran Gallery, 8223 Santa Monica Blvd., to Jan. 12.)